A few years ago, the Lord led me to understand the depth of His love for us through Scripture. Together, you and I worked hard at loving our neighbors as He taught us but also loving our enemies. Of course this is second only to the higher priority to love the Lord our God with all we have.
While absorbed by the house hunt, my focus on loving the Lord, those around me, and even loving my enemies diminished. I now see how much I changed. I moved backward from all He inspired in me. I hardly noticed it happening and ended up living the furthest I ever was from who I was trying to become.
The point I am trying to make is that when we lose focus on the most important things in life, we slip. When we trade great things we can be for things of lesser value we become less.
When I was dedicated and devoted to loving the Lord, others, and my enemies I was in an entirely different world. I believe I was functioning in God's Kingdom and in His blessing I was right where I needed and wanted to be. I truly found it difficult to be bothered by troublesome people. I found it so easy to love everyone around me. I believed that all people were awesome if I just took the time to see them through God's eyes and heart. I walked, talked and lived in a loving world where all people were lovable. I woke up almost every day filled with a peace and joy I had never experienced before. It was amazing.
I now see that I traded an amazing world for the difficult one I lived in before dedicating myself to loving. I admit I grew crabbier, meaner, and could not easily set aside another person's bad behavior. Almost everyone was getting on my nerves. Almost everyone in a car was a jerk. I complained and criticized everything and everybody. Boy, oh boy, was I lost.
I spent years sharing what I had learned and how God had inspired me to live, think and feel. Yet, I let it slip away because I focused on some stuff I wanted instead of maintaining my focus on the Godly inspiration that filled me. I was miserable. I turned my back on studying and writing. I blamed God for the lack of inspiration He filled me with before. I was used to Him filling me to overflowing, so much so, I could barely keep up. Now all that had dried up. He didn't cut me off, I cut Him off. I am sure the same level of inspiration was there all that time, I just couldn't hear it. I could only hear the noise of the worldly things I was chasing.
When I first started writing, I was inspired to write once a month but that quickly grew to once a week. I had slips of paper everywhere with ideas and thoughts of what to write about. I stopped the eStudy blog having read the New Testament 30 times except for Matthew and Revelation and I spent very little time with Him. (I intend to finish what I started and complete those two books) We hit 11,000 views in a month and people from as far as Africa had reached out to say how much they enjoyed this site.
I am sorry I abandoned my calling and all of you. I never want to go back to that place and am so blessed the Lord has not given up on me.
All I was experiencing is coming back. The peace, the love and the joy. God is always good and never gives up on us. I think He waits patiently for us to awake from some foolish dream we allow to overcome us. We all have a purpose and a calling. Once we find it we must keep focused on it. From my experience, turning away from our purpose will make us miserable. Life will never be what it is when we commit to who and what the Lord wants us to be.
Focus, focus, focus! You will never regret saying no to all the things that would knock you off course. God wants to bless us all in ways we may never expect and those blessings are so very good and rich. I will never trade that peace, joy and love for the things of the world ever again. God help me.
God's richest blessings to you all. I hope we can reconnect and continue to travel this amazing adventure He has set us on.